HOFFA: Family feud at heart of recent revelations about the missing Teamster

FILE - This July 26, 1959 file photo of Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa in Washington. Tony Zerilli, convicted of crimes as a reputed Mafia captain, has come forward with claims that missing Teamsters boss was buried in suburban Detroit. The former head of the FBI in Detroit said Zerilli was reputed to be the underboss of the Detroit organized crime family, so he would have been in the know. Hoffa disappeared from a Detroit-area restaurant in 1975. (AP Photo, File)

An intra-family squabble could be at the heart of the stunning new revelations in the 38 year-long search for the remains of slain labor boss Jimmy Hoffa, arguably one of the nation’s most infamous unsolved crimes.

The piece of property in Oakland Township recently alleged by convicted Detroit mob leader Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli that Hoffa was buried was owned by his first-cousin and former superior in the mafia, Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco, at the time of Hoffa’s disappearance on July 30, 1975.

In a two-part television interview this week jointly done between WDIV Channel 4 in Detroit and WNBC out of New York, Zerilli, 85, and a one-time confidant of the fearless Teamsters president, said he was told an open field on Buell Road, near the intersection of Adams and Orion roads, a parcel once owned by Tocco, also 85, is Hoffa’s final resting place.

Sources close to the situation claim it is no secret that Zerilli and Tocco are feuding.

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“There is a good deal of acrimony between Tony and his cousin, Jack,” said retired federal prosecutor Keith Corbett of the pair’s relationship. “And the resentment goes both ways.”

Corbett is quite familiar with Tocco and Zerilli. He successfully prosecuted them more than a decade ago (Tocco in 1998, Zerilli in 2002), in what was the biggest organized crime case in the history of the state. Convicted under the RICO Act as being the respective “Boss” and “Underboss,” or second in charge, of the area’s mob family, Tocco and Zerilli, are alleged to have fallen out over the bust and who caused it.

Whoever was at fault, both went to prison for it — Tocco for two years, Zerilli for seven.

Since Zerilli returned home from behind bars in 2009, he’s been shunned by his cousin, a man he grew up with and was business partners with until a series of squabbles began to erode their relationship.

“Jack won’t take his calls, won’t see him,” said one associate of theirs who declined to be named. “Everyone knows Jack blames Tony Z for what happened back in the 90s. There’s no letting bygones be bygones with these kind of people.”

The deterioration in their relationship actually began years earlier — as far back as the early 1970s when Zerilli was demoted in favor of Tocco to take the place of Zerilli’s dad (longtime reputed Detroit Godfather Joe Zerilli) atop the crime family he had allegedly headed for 41 years.

On the afternoon Hoffa was last seen in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant (now Joe Vicari’s Andiamo Tuscan Steakhouse) off Telegraph Road in Bloomfield Township, Zerilli was serving a prison sentence for skimming $6 million from the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

The arrest and subsequent conviction for his activities in Las Vegas, FBI documents allege, caused the elder Zerilli to tap his nephew, Tocco, instead of his son as his successor.

Despite not having first-hand knowledge of the notorious gangland slaying, his high-profile status within the crime syndicate, both during his incarceration and following his release, would give Zerilli access to such sensitive information.

In his television interview, he claimed he would have tried to prevent Hoffa’s demise had he been a free man at the time.

Zerilli, who experts are calling the most credible source to ever come forward in the investigation, says he is “flat broke” and that a potential payday for a book he is trying to sell, as well as peace of mind for the Hoffa family are his sole motivations for coming forward. He denies any involvement in the planning of the murder and membership in the mob.

Tocco bought the Buell Road property on a land contract in 1972, not officially taking title until 1982 from Bellaire Diversified, Inc. Over the years, Tocco, a very prominent and respected member of Southeastern Michigan’s Italian-American community, has owned a number of properties and businesses in Oakland County, including him and Zerilli co-owning the Hazel Park Race Track together for more than 30 years.

Joe Zerilli and William (Black Bill) Tocco, the pair’s fathers, were first-cousins, best friends and brother-in-laws, who immigrated to Detroit from Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century and are reputed to have founded the modern day mafia in the city, after winning what the local press dubbed, “The Crosstown Mob War” in 1931. The elder Zerilli and Tocco died peacefully as free men in 1977 and 1972, respectively.

Both Joe Zerilli’s and Jack Tocco’s names appear in the noted Hoffex memo (the official FBI report on the incident), tabbed as suspects in the crime.

Hoffa was killed after butting heads with the mob in his attempt to retake the Teamsters presidency following his own release from prison three years prior to his disappearance on bribery and jury-tampering charges.